Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Policy Brief
No. 10, March 2014
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the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies, to
be operationalised by reserving constituencies on a
rotational basis;
e
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to existing reservation for Scheduled Castes and Tribes;
e
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revision.
Recommendations
1.
2.
3.
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
2.
3.
Recommendations
1. Pass the Womens Reservation Bill without
delays and revisions
After decades of delays and posturing, it is time to pass
the bill. The current text may have caveats, but with
just one woman among every 10 male parliamentarians,
the gender imbalance at state and central level is too
stark to risk further confrontations and stalemates on a
revised bill. Furthermore, while details of the current text
are worth discussing, the above evidence drives home
the fact that 15 years of reservation will help challenge
and transform deeply entrenched gender disparities.
Oxfam India Policy Brief
33%
Women
25.7%
Women
52.3%
Open seats
7.3%
SC/ST Women
14.7%
ST/SC
22%
ST/SC
Endnotes
1 The Lok Sabha counts 63 women out of 540 legislators, and the Rajya Sabha
28 out of a total of 241: http://parliamentofindia.nic.in
2 P. Rai (2011), Electoral Participation of Women in India: Key Determinants
and Barriers, Economic & Political Weekly, 46(3): pp. 47-55.
3 International Institute of Population Sciences (2007), Key Findings, National
Family Health Survey-3, 2005-06, op. cit., pp. 512-513.
4 The Planning Commission has argued that this drop is partly explained
by issues of measurement. But the analysis of the International Labour
Organization and other scholars suggest that such issues only account for a
minor part of the reduction. International Labour Organization (2013), India:
Why is Womens Labour Force Participation Dropping?, available at: www.ilo.
org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/comment-analysis/WCMS_204762/
lang--en/index.htm (accessed February 2014); S. Chowdhury (2011),
Employment in India: What Does the Latest Data Show? Economic &
Political Weekly, XLVI(32), pp. 23-26.
5 International Labour Organisation, Key Indicators of the Labour
Force Participation, available at: http://www.ilo.org/empelm/what/
WCMS_114240/lang--en/index.htm (accessed February 2014).
6 Government of India (2010), The Constitution (One Hundred and Eight
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Amendment) Bill, 2008), section 3 and 4, Delhi: Rajya Sabha, of pp. 1-3, at:
http://164.100.47.4/BillsTexts/RSBillTexts/PassedRajyaSabha/108%20
RS%20pass-E.pdf (accessed February 2014).
Dahlerup, D., Freidenvall L. (2005). Quotas as a Fast Track to Equal
Representation for Women, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol.
7(1).
Countries such as Sweden were first, but over the past two decades, South
Africa, Rwanda, Taiwan and numerous countries across Latin America
have followed. V. Randall (2006), Legislative Gender Quotas and Indian
Exceptionalism: The Travails of the Womens Reservation Bill, Comparative
Politics, Vol. 39(1): 63.
Inter-parliamentary Union, Women in National Parliament, at: http://www.
ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm (accessed February 2014).
N. Menon (2000), Elusive Woman: Feminism and Womens Reservation Bill,
Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 35(43-44): 3835.
Centre for Study of Developing Societies (1996), National Election Study,
CSDS: Delhi.
In 2014, a survey across conducted by CNN, IBN and The Hindu found that
only 14 per cent of voters across 18 states opposed reservations for women.
CNN, IBN, The Hindu Election Tracker Survey, 2014, at: http://www.thehindu.
com/news/national/article4948689.ece (accessed January 2013).
Cited in: V. Randall (2006), op. cit.
A district is an administrative sub-division of the state with a population
ranging from a few thousands in remote areas to millions in highly populated
regions they are further sub-divided into blocks; the smallest administrative
unit governed by an elected assembly is a village or a cluster of smaller
villages of no less than 500 inhabitants.
Society of Tribal Women for Development (2004), Impact of Bottom up
Planning Under PRIs and Women Participation Therein, op. cit.
No systematic study exists on this issue, but the risk of backlash is widely
mentioned by NGO workers and in documentation reports. For example: M.
Bhattacharjya (2009), The Night Before the Elections, in Sarpanch Sahib,
Changing the Face of India, Delhi: Harper Collins, the Hunger Project;
Participatory Research in Asia (2009), Roshni Devi: Overcoming Social and
Caste Obstacles, Womens Handhout, N. 8; D. Mehrotra, Documentation
of Models and Strategies For Political Empowerment of Women in Gender
Justice Programs, 2013, report supported by Oxfam India (unpublished).
R. Chattopadhyay, E. Dufflo (2004), Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from
a Randomized Policy Experiment in India, Econometrica, Vol. 72, No. 5, pp.
1409-1443.
D. Sathe, S. Klasen, J. Priebe, M. Biniwale (2013), Can the Female Sarpanch
Deliver, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLVIII, No 11, pp. 50-57.
Ibid, p. 57.
L. Iyer, A. Mani, P. Mishra, P. Topalova (2011), The Power of Political Voice:
Womens Political Representation and Crime in India, Working Paper (11092), Harvard Business School, p. 18, available at: www.hbs.edu/faculty/
Publication%20Files/11-092.pdf (accessed May 2013).
Survey data from: Centre for Development Society (2009), State of the Nation
Wave VII, Delhi; Public Affairs Centre (2002),Millennial Survey, Public Affairs
Centre, Bangalore, quoted in: ibid, p. 21.
R. Bhavnani (2009), Do electoral Quotas Work after They Are Withdrawn?
American Political Science Review, Vol 103(1), at: http://faculty.polisci.wisc.
edu/bhavnani/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Bhavnani-Do-electoralquotas-work-after-they-are-withdrawn.pdf (accessed February 2014)
S. Bhalotra, I. Clots-Figueras, L. Iyer (2013), Path Breaker: How Does
Womens Political Participation Respond to Electoral Success?, Working
Paper, 13(035), Harvard Business School, at: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/
Publication%20Files/14-035_17a2aec5-97aa-49be-b297-e1b60342dfad.
pdf (accessed February 2014).
Ibid.
Among other, see Nivedita Menons discourse analysis across parties
showing that isolated calls for sub-quotas among representatives of major
parties have been sidelined by their own political. Menon (2000), op. cit.
Written by Lucy Dubochet, with inputs from Oommen Kurian, Julie Thekkudan, Avinash Kumar and Nisha Agrawal.
Oxfam India March 2014.
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